Hallway, Stairs and Landing
Our poor hallway, stairs and landing got neglected for ages. As a thoroughfare, it wasn’t an essential part of the house that needed renovating, and other rooms took priority, but equally it wasn’t the nicest welcome for us and guests who visited!
This is what it looks like now:
Here’s what it looked like when we viewed the house in 2016:
The Process
Of course we did the classic thing, and stripped off the wallpaper early on, and then realised that we had bitten off more than we could chew, with the high ceiling over the stairs. So it stayed semi stripped for a while until we could afford to pay proper decorators to finish the job…
When we realised we were slightly out of our depth.
Three layers of wallpaper later…
Bannister
Other than stripping wallpaper, plastering and redecorating, we also lowered the bulky brick bannister which really opened up the space.
The hallway looked like this for months.
Before and after lowering the bannister.
By lowering the bannister, we were able to open up the space so that we could create a gallery wall viewable from the living room doorway.
The artwork is mainly pieces we have been given and bits and bobs we’ve collected over the years.
Flooring
In the hallway, we ripped up the existing carpet, sanded the floorboards (we did this at the same time as the living room floor boards) and treated them with Osmo oil for a light and scandi look. We chose to use the Osmo oil with a white pigment which reduced the orangeness of the wood.
Up the stairs and along the landing we chose Sisal from Kersaint Cobb. It’s super hard wearing, so particularly good for stairs and heavy traffic areas, however is really difficult to fit, so I would suggest finding someone to fit the carpet before ordering it.
Walls & Woodwork
We chose a neutral warm colour for the walls, as I wanted a colour that would work all the way through the hallway, stairs and landing. In the end, I chose a Craig and Rose colour, Pipe Clay which is a beautiful matte pinky cream. As the ceiling in the downstairs hallway is quite low, I asked for it to be painted in the same colour as the walls so that the wall and ceiling blend in to each each other creating the illusion of more space.
The ceiling above the stairs is super high, so this was painted white, and the woodwork was painted white with a Satin Wood finish. I’ve learnt that matte paint on the woodwork is just not practical for every day living, and isn’t easy to dust either. I’d opt for Satin Wood every time now as is hard wearing and easy to hoover/dust too!
We had the original front door refurbished instead of replacing it.
Gallery Wall
I’d seen a number of gallery walls on Insta and Pinterest, and decided we had to have one! We also had a lot of art that needed displaying and not a lot of wall space, so this seemed to be the ideal solution.
Creating the finished gallery wall took quite a while, as we did it really slowly - starting from the bottom and working our way up, finding homes for paintings, prints and postcards every now and then. We did it by eye, as we didn’t have a space big enough to lay it out. I’d recommend checking out Lisa Dawson’s blog on creating a gallery wall as she is much better at explaining it than me!
Going up…
…going down.
A much more calming space to arrive home to now.
The enamel mirror was found at an Antique shop in Somerset, and the cabinet was purchased from IKEA. We use it to hide shoes!
The hallway is a big first impression when someone enters a house, so i’m glad we finally got around to decorating it to our taste. From the layers of wallpaper we scraped off, we could tell our hallway has certainly had a few interesting looks over the years, and it’s great to be able to put our own spin on it and bring it up to date again!
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about this little project, and please get in touch if you have any questions.
We sourced from:
Carpet - Kersaint Cobb
Paint - Craig and Rose ‘Pipe clay’
Cabinet (bought two and stacked one on top of the other) - IKEA
Floor oil - Osmo oil